Beyond the political executions and purges, one of the first orders of business for Castro was the establishment of Committees for the Defense of the Revolution in every neighborhood. Their task? To monitor the population for disloyalty and errant political thoughts.
My family escaped this horror and had to rebuild their lives from scratch well into adulthood and with children in a new land, so it really bothers me to see people praise anything about this monster.
Would you post a comment saying that you admire Hitler for his takeover of a massive industrial power? So why would you for Castro?
Also, quoting from the Chomsky clan doesn't help your credibility. These are the same people who sang the praises of Hugo Chavez as he ruled Venezuela by decree and ran it into the ground.
And yes, the CIA did help organize an invasion force made up of Cuban exiles who wanted to save their country from communism. It's a shame Jack Kennedy didn't have the intestinal fortitude to either see it through or cancel it, instead deciding to cancel air support after landing people on the beaches.
It's possible to admire the latter aspects in isolation, without condoning most of what they did. I feel the same way about Castro's revolutionary campaign.
(Let's leave Hitler out of online forum conversations for everyone's sake...)
I think this quote from your original post better shows the profound misconceptions that you have about the Castro regime.
The internet is not tightly restricted because the "he and his comrades are just too old to get it". It's restricted because the free exchange of ideas and facts is a threat to their brutal dictatorship. Because all of their heads would probably roll if it ever collapses.
Napoleon and Caesar are now academic history. They are not combatants in any ongoing conflicts, nor causing any ongoing suffering. The Castros, meanwhile, are still exporting their "revolution" to other places (Venezuela is a very visible victim) and those who suffer greatly at their hands are still with us.
For several years until 1959, the Batista government received financial, military, and logistical support from the United States.
The Kennedy speech they link to is amazing:
The real question is: What should we have done? What did we do wrong? How did we permit the Communists to establish this foothold 90 miles away?
The answer is fourfold.
First, we refused to help Cuba meet its desperate need for economic progress. In 1953 the average Cuban family had an income of $6 a week. Fifteen to twenty percent of the labor force was chronically unemployed.
Only a third of the homes in the island even had running water, and in the years which preceded the Castro revolution this abysmal standard of living was driven still lower as population expansion out-distanced economic growth.
Only 90 miles away stood the United States - their good neighbor - the richest Nation on earth - its radios and newspapers and movies spreading the story of America's material wealth and surplus crops.
But instead of holding out a helping hand of friendship to the desperate people of Cuba, nearly all our aid was in the form of weapons assistance - assistance which merely strengthened the Batista dictatorship - assistance which completely failed to advance the economic welfare of the Cuban people - assistance which enabled Castro and the Communists to encourage the growing belief that America was indifferent to Cuban aspirations for a decent life.
This year Mr. Nixon admitted that if we had formulated a program of Latin American economic development 5 years ago: "It might have produced economic progress in Cuba which might have averted the Castro takeover." But what Mr. Nixon neglects to mention is the fact that he was in Cuba 5 years ago himself - gaining experience. He saw the conditions. He talked with the leaders. He knew what our aid program consisted of. But his only conclusion as stated in a Havana press conference, was his statement that he was "very much impressed with the competence and stability" of the Batista dictatorship.
Mr. Nixon could not see then what should have been obvious - and which should have been even more obvious when he made his ill-fated Latin American trip in 1958 - that unless the Cuban people, with our help, made substantial economic progress, trouble was on its way. If this is the kind of experience Mr. Nixon claims entitles him to be President, then I would say that the American people cannot afford many more such experiences.
Secondly, in a manner certain to antagonize the Cuban people, we used the influence of our Government to advance the interests of and increase the profits of the private American companies, which dominated the island's economy. At the beginning of 1959 U.S. companies owned about 40 percent of the Cuban sugar lands - almost all the cattle ranches - 90 percent of the mines and mineral concessions - 80 percent of the utilities - and practically all the oil industry - and supplied two-thirds of Cuba's imports.
Of course, our private investment did much to help Cuba. But our action too often gave the impression that this country was more interested in taking money from the Cuban people than in helping them build a strong and diversified economy of their own.
The symbol of this shortsighted attitude is now on display in a Havana museum. It is a solid gold telephone presented to Batista by the American-owned Cuban telephone company. It is an expression of gratitude for the excessive telephone rate increase which the Cuban dictator had granted at the urging of our Government. But visitors to the museum are reminded that America made no expression at all over the other events which occurred on the same day this burdensome rate increase was granted, when 40 Cubans lost their lives in an assault on Batista's palace.
The third, and perhaps most disastrous of our failures, was the decision to give stature and support to one of the most bloody and repressive dictatorships in the long history of Latin American repression. Fulgencio Batista murdered 20,000 Cubans in 7 years - a greater proportion of the Cuban population than the proportion of Americans who died in both World Wars, and he turned democratic Cuba into a complete police state - destroying every individual liberty.
Yet, our aid to his regime, and the ineptness of our policies, enabled Batista to invoke the name of the United States in support of his reign of terror.
(In a way he is the ultimate "startup hero" -- from zero to world-class disruptor!)
That said, his government has clearly failed all the ideals he touts in this '60s interview. For example, he speaks in favour of freedom of expression -- if only the means were there for everybody to get published:
"The day will come when all the resources will be available, that is, when such a book would not be published to the detriment of a textbook or of a book having universal value in world literature. Then there will be resources to publish books on the basis of a broader criterion, and one will be able to argue whatever one wishes about any theme. I, especially, am a partisan of the widest possible discussion in the intellectual realm. Why? Because I believe in the free man, I believe in the well-educated man, I believe in the man able to think, in the man who acts always out of conviction, without fear of any kind. And I believe that ideas must be able to defend themselves. I am opposed to the blacklists of books, prohibited films, and all such things."
Well, the Internet became just that medium, but Castro never deemed fit to give access to the citizens of his country. He and his comrades are just too old to get it. They should have made room for new generations long ago instead of clinging to power and the illusion of their own indispensability. Their extended single-party reign has crippled the Cuban economy more than any sanctions could.